Item Roundup: Episodes 1-2

Ju Ji-hoon makes his much-awaited return to dramaland with this week’s premiere of Item. The first two episodes introduce our three protagonists by delving into their past and drop hints as to how their paths might cross in the future. We are also given glimpses into the world of these mysterious ‘items’ with supernatural powers, that everyone seems to be after.

Kang Gon (Ju Ji-hoon) wakes up from a strange dream involving a blue bracelet with special powers and a woman jumping off a building. He lives with his adorable niece, Kang Da-in (Shin Rin-ah), and we see snippets of their life together as he makes Da-in breakfast and braids her hair, while she chides him for making her late for school. Gon is a prosecutor, and as he heads to the public prosecutor’s office for work, we are told it’s his last day there and he’s transferring to Seoul.

During the course of an investigation, Gon comes across Ko Dae-soo (Lee Jung-hyun) wearing the exact same bracelet he saw in his dream, which glows blue and gives Dae-soo the power to lift extraordinarily heavy objects. A scuffle ensues between the two, during which Gon manages to take the bracelet off of Dae-soo and it ends up falling in the river.

An immaculately dressed man exits the prison. This is Jo Se-hwang (Kim Kang-woo), the chairman of Hwawon group. Se-hwang is also a collector of these supernatural objects and seems obsessed with them to a disturbing degree. Turns out the bracelet was a part of his collection, and noticing it missing, he flies into a murderous rage.

Right at that moment, the Polaroid camera in the room, which also has magical powers, prints a picture of a little girl crouched beside the bracelet at a riverside. And sure enough, in the next scene, we see Da-in discovering the bracelet.

Criminal profiler, Shin So-young (Jin Se-yeon) is investigating the disappearance of Nam Chul-soon, the Chairman of Tree of Hope foundation. After her team decides to follow an anonymous tip despite her warnings, she drives to the house Nam Chul-soon was last spotted at to reinvestigate the case. In the house, she finds a mirror arranged suspiciously, only to dig behind it and discover the man’s dead body wrapped in plastic. The body has a page ripped from a book stuck over it, with the lines: “Haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that kill the innocent…“

Through two different flashbacks, we are given a peek into both Gon and Se-hwang’s pasts. With Gon, we are taken back to the day he lost his brother (Da-in’s dad) to a car accident. It had also been the day Gon had graduated from law school, and in his dying moments, his brother had apologized and asked him to take care of Da-in.

Se-hwang visits his ailing father at the hospital and thinking back to a disturbing memory of his father brutally punishing him, Se-wang tells his father to stay alive in the same vegetative state while he takes care of the company.

Somewhere, a priest kneels before the cross as red light shoots from an object in his hand, and taking the shape of a whip, repeatedly cuts gashes into his back. The episode ends with Gon and So-young meeting in Seoul, and Gon recognizing her as the woman from his dream.

Indoor Enthusiast (Esha) is a staff writer at Kdramapal. She is responsible for bringing all the latest happenings in Kdramaland, as well as features and recaps of currently airing dramas, to the readers of the site. As a gender studies student, she loves analyzing K-dramas through the lens of gender politics and social justice. You're most likely to find her droning on and on about how Ji Hae-soo from It's Okay That's Love and Sung Bora from Reply 1988 are the best heroines to ever grace our screens. Her favorite dramas tend to be thrillers like Secret Forest and Signal, as well as heartwarming shows like Misaeng. When not in the mood for either of those, you can find her binging on shows about female friendships a la Age of Youth or rom-coms that come with sprinklings of feminism, like Because This Life Is My First. She lives in India, spends all her free time reading books, and would love nothing more than to meet Gong Hyo-jin and sign away her life's earnings to the actress.
Indoor Enthusiast can be reached at [email protected]